Southern California’s coastline is under siege from the ocean.
New footage from Orange County shows what appears to be a roughly 25-foot wall of backwash and exploding water in Laguna Beach, created as Hurricane Rachel’s swell collides with an already abnormally elevated Pacific.
Check out the video below:
The video itself is billed as showing “25′ Backwash Waves and Flooding,” and the scene is spectacular: incoming swell reaches the shoreline, collides with returning water, and erupts upward into a towering, chaotic wall.
“I’ve never seen anything like this ever,” Chris Monroe, aka BEEFS T.V. says. “The beach is gone. This parking lot is literally like a beach… it’s going to PCH!”
See another angle of the massive wall of water, linked here, and below.
To be clear, the National Weather Service is not forecasting 25-foot breaking surf across Orange County. Its latest warning calls for 5-to-7-foot surf with local sets to 9 feet Sunday. But those waves are arriving on top of high tides exceeding seven feet and unusually high background sea levels, producing extreme runup, flooding, and erosion.
And Newport Beach is already underwater.
Related: The Ocean Is Pouring Into Newport Beach, and the Worst May Still Be Ahead
The city declared a local emergency Friday after seawater poured across the Balboa Peninsula, stranding vehicles and damaging homes and businesses. Officials estimated flooding spread across 15 to 20 blocks.
See footage of the flooding near the Wedge, linked here, and below.
“This is the worst I’ve seen it in my 20 years on the Peninsula,” Newport Beach City Councilman Joe Stapleton told the Los Angeles Times.
Even the tide itself behaved abnormally. City Utilities Director Mark Vukojevic said Friday morning’s high tide arrived 20 inches above the predicted level, calling that difference “kind of record-breaking for us.”
Part of the problem is an El Niño-fueled Kelvin wave now raising the baseline of the Pacific. Scientists say it can boost coastal sea levels by roughly 6 to 12 inches, meaning every high tide and hurricane swell starts from a higher launching point.
Meanwhile, Rachel is accelerating northeast. As of early Saturday, the National Hurricane Center placed the tropical storm about 640 miles south-southwest of San Diego, packing 60-mph winds and moving northeast at 22 mph.
And forecasters say Sunday could be worse.
The NWS is warning that “significant coastal flooding and erosion is likely. Orange County has already seen what that combination can do. The biggest threat may be on its way.
Related: Hurricane Rachel’s Colossal Swell Is Already Pummeling Southern California (Video)
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